The Brazil of North America

To observe the decades-long paralysis of America's political elite in controlling her borders calls to mind the insight of James Burnham in 1964 -- "Liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide."

What the ex-Trotskyite turned Cold Warrior meant was that by faithfully following the tenets of liberalism, the West would embrace suicidal policies that would bring about the death of her civilization.

The crisis on our Southern border, where the left, and not only the left, is wailing that we cannot turn away desperate people fleeing wicked regimes and remain true to our liberal values, is a case in point.

To assert that we cannot take all these people in, that we must send them back and seal out border for our survival, is to be called a variety of names -- racist, xenophobe, nativist -- all of which translate into "illiberal."

But as we continue our descent to Third World status, perhaps we should explore more deeply the "diversity" that has of late come to be regarded as America's most treasured attribute.

In 1960, we were not nearly so diverse. Nine in 10 Americans professed a Christian faith. Nine in 10 Americans traced their ancestry back to Europe. E Pluribus Unum. We were one nation and one people.

Since then, we have become the Brazil of North America, a multiracial, multilingual, multiethnic, multicultural "universal nation" unlike any that has existed in the history of the West.

And if we look abroad at those Western nations traveling along this perilous path with us, we can see clearly now our future

Before the 1960s, Europe never knew mass immigration. And after the terrible ethnic cleansing of Germans after World War II, most of Europe's nations were ethnically homogeneous.

Several were not. Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, the USSR. At the end of the Cold War, with freedom, all three came apart. Where we had three nations, suddenly we had 24 and such sub-nations as South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria.

Now Scots are seeking to break away from England, Catalans from Spain, Corsicans from France, Venetians from Italy and Flemish from Belgium, though these peoples have lived together for centuries.

Crimeans have gone back to Russia, while Chechens and other peoples of the Caucasus are fighting to break free of Russia.

The roots of these secessionist movements may be traced to economics, ethnicity, history, religion, language, culture and borders.